PRESIDENT NKRUMAH A LEADER WHO LOST TOUCH WITH ECONOMIC REALITIES

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31000, 4 March 1966, Page 12

PRESIDENT NKRUMAH A LEADER WHO LOST TOUCH WITH ECONOMIC REALITIES

IBu

J. D. F. JONES,

, diplomatic correspondent of the “Financial Tim

(Reprinted from the "Financial Times” by arrangement J

Few African leaders will have shed many The Ghanaian President Nkrumah had been overthrown by his African military leader is the fourth victim so far this year of a Wes coup. Since 1957, when he became the first African rn* < win independence for his country, Nkrumah has d J for making enemies.

These range from the Ghanaian opposition politicians whom he imprisoned or expelled, to the Prime Ministers of neighbouring states who, with increasing frequency and indignation, have announced that President Nkrumah was plotting their downfall. But in recent years “Osagyefo,” as he liked to be called, has added the hostility—and the fear—of many ordinary Ghanaians, a fear which was never entirely stifled beneath the trappings of the totalitarian one-party state that Ghana had become. Charm And Brilliance Nkrumah is certainly not the monster that he has been painted in the world press. He is a man of great charm and real brilliance, a passionate idealist and theorist. His writings on Africa would be distinguished even if he were not a world statesman. He is not even a cruel or, despite the inevitable rumours, a corrupt man. His failings have been very much those of a theoretician: once he had achieved power he seems to have lost contact with the people he governed. Obsessed by the ambition to keep his small state in the vanguard of independent Africa, desperately committed to protect this new independence from a second, more pernicious colonialism, and fascinated by the intellectual challenge of international statesmanship, he was content to leave to his Ministers and his own Convention Peoples Party the task of putting into practice the grand projects of his dreams. In the event his Ministers produced chaos, and he himself failed to achieve anything abroad. Most serious of all, he lost all touch with the actual, as opposed to the theoretical, problems of his country. Repression Record If Nkrumah had lost all sense of proportion, locked away with his bodyguard, the Party was quite unsuited to hold him in check. The C.P.P. dominance was achieved by totalitarian methods. Ghana has had a scandalous history of repression of human rights. The Opposition have been thrown into prison. The press is a ridiculous mouthpiece of the Party, The Universities are intimidated. The courts are controlled. Children are indoctrinated and youth brigades are used as thugs. Every visitor to Accra—a neat, orderly town, the avenues lined with political slogans and triumphal architecture reminiscent of fascist Europe—knows that this is a country of telephone tapping, informers and secret police.

On the other hand, corruption, though it exists, is not as bad as it was in Nigeria. The coup was probably inspired by the army officers’ desire not so much to “cleanse" the country from the politicians as to rescue it from political repression and economic disaster. In Accra last month it was startling to find how many Ghanaians in private conversation would insist that “this cannot be allowed to go on.” They would explain that, if this was the price Ghana was to pay for her very real achievements in the fields of industrialisation and education, then it was too high. Nkrumah has been overthrown above all because he had not begun to meet Ghana’s grave economic prob lems. In fact, the situation has never been more critical than it is at this moment. Ghana came to independence with the most prosperous indigenous economy of all the African colonial states. This, and the reserves of over £2OO million rested on the cocoa industry, which accounts for one-third of the world crop and for two-thirds of Ghana’s export earnings. The catastrophic effect of the plunge in world prices meant that by the end of 1963 Ghana's reserves were down to under £5O million. But the cocoa crisis is not the only culprit, as the International Monetary Fund made clear after Ghana's desperate request for loans of anything up to 1000 million dollars from the West. Nkrumah had determined on the most sweeping transformation of the economy, according to Marxist theories, and at the same time he had indulged in the wildest prestige spending, ranging from an enormous diplomatic representation abroad to a national airline, from a motorway to a Navy, all in the cause of creating a true Ghanaian independence. (Significantly he, was accompanied in Peking with an entourage of 70.) There are now about 50 state-owned industries, but they have failed to substitute local consumer products for spiralling imports, and only a handful of them are making a profit or running with any degree of efficiency. I.M.F. Recommendations The crisis has now reached its climax because the I.M.F. refused to help until Ghana put her nouse in order. Their recommendations included limiting Government expenditure, a halt to new projects, a lower price to the cocoa farmers, a fresh look at barter arrangements, stricter use of import licensing, and making the state enterprises pay their

way. For six months the Ghana Government has been dithering over these pro . posals. Imports have continued to soar. “Prison graduates” are still thought qualified to run new industries. Foreign investment is at a stand-still. Foreign exchange has been allocated on a hand-to-mouth basis and in late December the central bank took over control of foreign exchange. There was the odd gesture towards Washington the cocoa price to the producers was cut from 54s to 40s a head load: a supplementary budget was introduced, and Professor Willy Abrahm (formerly of All Souls), has produced a devastating re port on trade malpractices which it describes as a "gnu testimony to the rascality corruption, lack of integrity and honesty on the pat of small-minded individuals some of whom it named is including employees of thi Trade Ministry and Ghani National Trading Corporation It was also helpful that the cocoa price struggled up again from £9O a ton in July, 1965, to regain its January 1965, level of £lBO a ton. But the full benefit of this will not be felt because a great deal of forward selling has been done at low prices, and there have been several large barter deals with Russia and East Europe in flat contradiction of the I.M.F. advice.

The plea to the I.M.F. was associated with a suggested moratorium on foreign debt repayments. The precise position here is confused, and even the I.M.F. is understood to have had trouble exacting accurate figures from the Government. An important factor from the British point of view is that a number of 180-day commercial credits with British companies are thought to be falling due in the next couple of months. Last Chance

It was generally acknowledged that the Budget would be Ghana’s last chance to give the I.M.F. a satisfactory reply. This was presented only on February 21, after several postponements and appears to contain nothing that can satisfy the I.M.F. and World Bank. The Finance Minister, Mr Amoako-Atta (who has recently been touring Eastern Europe looking for help) said it was “very difficult” to satisfy some of the I.M.F. recommendations. These financial embarrassments were reflected in the rapidly deteriorating situation at home. The cost-of-living index last July was 35 per cent up on the previous year, and since then the situation has deteriorated with a rush. By last month a loaf of bread had gone up from 2s to 4s 6d. An egg now costs 9d. Beer had gone up from 3s 6d to 4s 5d a large bottle. Shortages still abound and where the Government has tried to control prices the black market has flourished. A 1001 b sack of flour officially cost £5 15s, but on the black market goes for £l2. A sack of rice costs £ll 10s, while the official price is £5 2s lid. Throughout this decline the President has shown no sign of understanding—or wanting to understand—what was happening. He has never seemed to interest himself in the means required to achieve his theoretical ends, and he may not even have appreciated yet that the economy has broken down.

His foreign policy has also failed, and more and more Ghanaians are aware of this. Certainly they know how much it cost them—the O.A.U. (Organisation of African Unity) meeting last autumn, for which a luxurious conference hall was built at a cost of £6 million, was known in Accra as the 1.0. U. Conference. Nkrumah constantly inveighed against the perils of Western capitalism but this tarnished St. George who rode out so often to do battle with the dragon of “neo-colonialism" had meanwhile installed his own dragon in his back garden in the shape of Kaiser Aluminium's major role in the Volta river Project, the massive development scheme which the President inaugurated only last month. An Act Of Faith Nkrumah has not played a significant role in the Commonwealth. His decision to break with Britain over her Rhodesian policy lost him the chance to voice his dissent inside Commonwealth circles. His forays in the Vietnam crisis, have had no success. His activities in Africa have merely earned him the reputation for meddling in other states’ affairs.

The same failure has attended the cause dearest to his heart; again and again he has put forward his thesis that Africa can only save herself against Balkanisation by forming a United States of Africa and with every O.A.U. meeting the idea recedes still further. The other leaders have referred to the practical difficulties and have been more interested in the possibility of regional groupings, which Nkrumah sees as the greatest enemy of PanAfricanism. He has been asking for an act of faith, and the African leaders’ refusal to discount the cost and the difficulties finds an echo in the action of the Ghana army.